Chiropractic Marketing

Social Media is the “hottest” buzz word on the Internet today. For those of you who would like to consider Social Media marketing as an adjunct to your overall chiropractic internet marketing strategy, but aren’t quite sure what all the buzz is about, let’s talk a little about the “Who, What, When, Where, and How” of social media and you, that’s “Who.”

Social media marketing could possibly be very much like, and entirely unlike, any chiropractic marketing strategy you’ve thought about. In the “very much like” category, you wouldn’t consider any type of marketing plan without making an effort to understand what it’s about and what you want to get from it. What are your goals? Once you’re clear about what you want, you’ll be more capable of using social media to your biggest advantage.

Before you actually start your social media endeavor, you will need to make sure that you “own your name” on all the social media outlets, that is to say, be certain that your name or the name of your clinic is procurable so that you can use the identical same name on each and every one of the social channels you want to use. There is a service that is free and will assist you with your search when you’re ready. Knowem.com is the who to go to. This service will research where your name is and/or if it’s available or not on a sufficient number of social media sites.

When you have “locked up” all of your social media accounts, the next step is to choose where you want to be active. Beginning with only a small number of social media sites is the most beneficial because, let’s face it, you have a clinic to run and patients to see. You won’t want to get involved in too many social media sites. How do decide which sites are best for you? The big ones (where most of the action is) are facebook, twitter, linkedin, and Youtube.

What successful social media activity will do for you is build a genuine presence in your community. What you should never do “sell” on your social media sites, in other words don’t sell your chiropractic services, don’t sell products, don’t sell anything! The benefit of social media is for you to have an addition channel through which to network with the community. Of course, let them know what you do, but do it by becoming a participant. There is truly no difference between the way social networking works and the way you normally network offline. There is no getting around it, people on social media do not want to be sold to! Social media sites are similar to a neighborhood backyard barbecue. People are standing around having a conversation about who they are and what they do, and then a person asks you what you do. Or, perhaps you start the conversation by (just) saying, “Hello, I’m Dr. ____. With social media marketing, the same dynamics apply. Social media sites should be handled the same way you’d “work” offline networking opportunities to promote yourself, i.e., answer the questions and concerns that let people know who you are and gets them interested in the who that’s you!

Many people among which sales men have a Profile on LinkedIn and some connections. However, most of them ask themselves: what can I actually do with it? What is the added value of LinkedIn for me?

The most important reasons why LinkedIn is such a powerful tool, are:

• It is the largest online business network with more than 35 million members worldwide. In 2008 LinkedIn grew from 19 million members to 34 million and it is still growing.
• The power of LinkedIn is that it makes the relationships between people visible.

 

The consequence of those two aspects is that the chances are big that the person you want to do business with also has a Profile on LinkedIn and that you can see who you have in common.

Don’t let the “simplicity” of this fool you. Never before we had the chance to see which personal contact of ours could introduce us to our prospects.

Before LinkedIn good sales people already thought who they could ask for referrals. Doing business is so much easier when a mutual contact introduces you to a prospect. The trust between the two other parties is transferred to you. This increases your chances to make a sale dramatically. Before LinkedIn good sales people thought about which contact could possibly know potential customers. The disadvantage of this approach is that they had to make some guesses about the network of their contacts. Another disadvantage was that they sometimes got referrals to people or organizations which didn’t qualify as potential customers after all. The result: a significant loss of valuable time of all parties involved.

LinkedIn helps to deal with this process much more effectively and efficiently. LinkedIn helps to reverse the situation: instead of guessing who your network could introduce you to, you look up potential customers on LinkedIn (via their name or via parameters like function, industry and geography). Since many people are on LinkedIn chances are high you won’t only find them, but also the people you have in common.

LinkedIn uncovers many unexpected relationships between people. It is already hard to maintain our own contacts and keep up to date of all the changes in our own network. It is impossible to know who the people from our network know. LinkedIn shows these relationships. Your neighbor who you never discuss business with might be connected to the prospect you are already trying to get in touch with for a long time!

To your success !

Jan

Jan Vermeiren, founder of Networking Coach

PS: more tips can be found in the book “How to REALLY use LinkedIn”.

Make sure to get your FREE light version of the book at: www.how-to-really-use-linkedin.com